About

NevOnNevOn is the archive weblog of Neville Hobson, a British business communicator based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, a record of commentary and conversations from December 2002 until 22 February 2006. This site is no longer updated - please visit www.nevillehobson.com.

09 February 2005

A manager for nine years at Microsoft, Berkun draws on some of his experiences there in this 18-page PDF to provide a wide range of practical tips and tricks on managing people, especially talented ones.

For me, these words in the early content say the most important things:

Managers have more to do with enabling the happiness and productivity of the people that work for them than anyone else in the organization. A manager, at any level of hierarchy, from line project manager to CEO, has an emotional responsibility to their reports, or to the people who are dependent on them. Like a parent in a family, or a coach of a sports team, a manager sets the tone for dialogue (open and thoughtful, or defensive and confrontational?), enables or prevents a fun work environment, and interprets or ignores the corporate rules and structure, for a daily practice of shared work.

And these:

While managers are hired to get stuff done for their employer, they also make a personal commitment to each of their reports by being their boss. The manager automatically takes on more responsibility for the career of their employee than anyone else in the organization or company. They might ignore this responsibility, or do a crappy job of it, but the responsibility is still theirs.

I haven't read it yet (I unwrapped the package only last night!) but a quick 15-minute scan through indicates to me that this will be a very helpful book to anyone looking for some broad understanding on what the blogosphere means to business and the influencing role it plays, why businesses should care and how to use blogs as a business tool.

An extract from the book's blurb:

From a business standpoint, your organization can benefit from developing a two-pronged approach to blogging by creating offensive and defensive plans. Not only do you need to blog internally to promote ideas and foster better communication among colleagues, but your company also should take advantage of the advertising and publicity benefits of blogging. Put yourself at the front of people's minds, and make sure you stay there. As for a defensive strategy, create a plan for addressing immediately even one negative blog, because in just a click of a mouse it will spread like wildfire, and you'll soon have one hundred negative blog references out there, and then a thousand or more. Blog shows you how to develop both.

In other words, it addresses everything business bloggers have been saying for ages about why organizations should embrace blogs. It validates that view; more importantly, it provides concise but detailed information on the background to the blogosphere, what's happening right now (ie, about November 2004 when the book was being finalized), and what business executives need to do to get started.

The last section of seven chapters is where I've spent most time on my quick scan as it's all about the nitty-gritty of business blogging. I very much like the content's focus, aimed as it is at the business executive, with its examples of the types of organization and situations where a blog would be of significant value to the organization. It includes sections on leadership blogging, management blogging and employee blogging, and recommends involving the corporate communicators in planning a business blog - a smart suggestion which I like a lot!

Hugh Hewitt is a well-known writer and commentator in the US (maybe not so well known in Europe), and if my quick scan is anything to go by, he's done a good job in presenting the business case for blogging.

27 January 2005

Welcome to a the second Special Edition of the Hobson & Holtz Report, a 30-minute conversation with Jeremy Wright recorded live at the New Communications Forum 2005 in Napa, California, USA, on January 27, 2005.

A high-profile business blogger, Jeremy authors the Ensight blog and is now focused on building his new venture, Inside Blogging. He gained signficant blogosphere and media attention in recent months related to his being auctioned on eBay, being fired by his employer for blogging and his plans for starting a book on business blogging. In this show, listen to Jeremy's thoughts and views about his book, his new venture (with Darren Barefoot) and about being dooced for blogging.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

19 January 2005

Things are beginning to move with The Red Couch, the collaborative work on producing what could be the definitive business book on why companies should blog, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

This is no ordinary business book project:

Most of this project is being executed in the public eye, via The Red Couch blogsite. The authors expect to gain input, wisdom, useful criticism and content from its visitors. In a way, these are contributing editors. This intentional transparency of our business project is in part proof-of-concept, but it also has enormous awareness-building attributes. At this point, before a first chapter is actually written, The Red Couch has already generated more public attention than most books that have already been published. According to PubSub, The Red Couch is among the 6,000 most visited blogsites among the 7.5 million tracked.

Yesterday, the book's proposal to publishers was posted on the project blog. It clearly illustrates the considerable thought and planning that has already gone into this project in these initial stages, with a comprehensive content outline categorized under three broad headings - Why?, Doing It and Mastery.

[The Red Couch] argues that blogging is not just another tactical communications distribution channel, but a new strategic medium that benefits both companies and customers, giving each an enhanced understanding of the other. The Red Couch explains why businesses of all sizes and in all places should blog. It then goes on to explain, in non-technical straightforward terms, how to get started blogging and how to become a master at it, using it to more effectively distribute and receive information vital to a company. [...] It predicts that companies that adopt blogging will prevail while those who do not may face the same fate as the village blacksmith who ignored the early automobile a century earlier.

Other than its content, what's especially interesting about this book project is the participatory nature of its content development - the "intentional transparency" mentioned above. Anyone who has some value to add through their own insight and suggestions (the "contributing editors") can make them as comments in the project blog. The two authors may incorporate those suggestions or derivatives of them into the content in some way.

The authors say they expect the book to be completed by mid-September, with it ready for sale during the first quarter 2006. They expect the book will be between 85,000 and 120,000 words in length, or between 250 and 325 pages.

In taking a quiet break from working on the PowerPoint presentation I'll be using in my workshop at the New Communications Forum 2005 next week, I was reading the Financial Times online when I came to an article by FT columnist Jonathan Guthrie yesterday entitled Don't be seduced by PowerPoint (paid subscription-only access).

Guthrie says:

Death by a thousand slides has become a feature of business events ranging from small presentations to speeches before large audiences. With 300 million users worldwide and counting, PowerPoint is too often a substitute for communication rather than an adjunct to it.

That best sums up what's been going through my mind as I prepare the concise PPT I'll be using next week - avoid such a situation at all costs by making sure the presentation is a simple guide to what I want the workshop to be about and focus on, with the PowerPoint's content clear and concise in supporting overall communication that enables participants to easily understand why they're there and what's expected of everyone.

In other words, the presentation (inappropriate word, really) is a visual aid - a tool - to my being able to effectively communicate with my audience in a way that helps them understand everything I'm saying and showing, which will help them frame responses (questions or comments) that is the start of a dialog - two-way communication.

Guthrie comments on a book about public speaking called Lend Me Your Ears by Max Atkinson, a speaker and trainer who uses the findings of scientific research combined with the rules of classical rhetoric to highlight the secrets of successful persuasion:

[Atkinson] argues that templates and guidance built into PowerPoint encourage users to compile tedious lists instead of making sparing use of pictures and simple diagrams. Speakers should "approach PowerPoint with caution", cautions Prof Atkinson, as if warning against an escaped lunatic. He told me: "If you follow the model presentations in PowerPoint, you are almost guaranteed to give a bad presentation."

Then Guthrie adds some on-the-bullet comment (pun definitely intended) on some different thinking business people should employ when planning and using a PowerPoint:

Better still, if you must use slides, switch the projector off and the lights on after 10 minutes - tops. [...] Use reversals of meaning, so your audience will ask what they can do for Allied Grommets, not what Allied Grommets can do for them. Deploy three-part lists to inform, intrigue and, um, inspire. Make a splash with imagery, your similes glittering like sunbeams reflected from the wavelets dancing in a Mediterranean harbour.

That last sentence paints a nice picture: you can almost see those sunbeams.

I then popped over to Beyond Bullets, Cliff Atkinson's blog (I assume the same surnames must be purely coincidental!) - an excellent resource for everything you want to know about effective presentations and getting the most out of PowerPoint - and see a recent post by Cliff (Zen and the Art of PowerPoint) about imagery and metaphor and talking with passion.

This is how it all must be, I believe - present and talk concisely, persuasively and with passion. If not, you will lose your audience and become one of the 'statistical PowerPoint failures' Guthrie mentions in his FT article.

But if you're passionate, you have every chance of really engaging with your audience and taking them along with you towards the point you want everyone to reach. They will see where they're going.

Cliff's concluding paragraph in his post sums this up perfectly:

[...] A classic book of the 1970s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance told the story of a guy riding a motorcycle. By the end of the story, you realize it never was about the motorcycle after all, but the rider's attitude toward life. Will there come a day when our presentations are not about bullet points, but our attitude toward our audiences, and ourselves? The day that happens, we will all be on a high-octane journey toward positive change.

(Cliff has written a book about using PowerPoint effectively called Beyond Bullet Points, to be published by Microsoft Press next month).

11 January 2005

A new selection of manifestos from ChangeThis is available on free download from today.

Among the six new ones, I immediately downloaded two in particular which really are good and worth time in reading:

The Hughtrain by Hugh McLeod. Liberally sprinkled with Hugh's wicked gapingvoid cartoons: "You've read The Cluetrain, now Hugh McLeod brings you The Hughtrain. A manifesto on brands, blogs, and the now of advertising and marketing. Written and illustrated by one of our most popular authors ever."

I've read bits of Hugh's train on his blog. Not been able to get a complete handle on all the concepts before. Maybe it's the PDF which I can read all in one go, I don't know, but now I get it. Beyond Cluetrain, no question.

Beginner's Guide to Business Blogging by Debbie Weil. Billed as "a quick guide to understanding, launching and maintaining a blog as a business and marketing tool," this 41-page publication is well written. While it covers much ground that will be very familiar to many business bloggers, it does so in a way that still holds your interest. Good sections in particular on RSS, search and syndication; well thought-out Q&As, a case study on a success story, plus lots of links to places referenced in the content.

Whatever you might know about business blogging, you should also read this manifesto. It's available for free download only until 25 January. After that, you'll have to buy it from Debbie ($29).

Bootstrappers run billion-dollar companies, nonprofit organizations, and start-ups in their basements. A bootstrapper is determined to build a business that pays for itself every day. In many ways, it's easiest to define a bootstrapper by what she isn't: a money-raising bureaucrat who specializes in using other people's money to take big risks in growing a business. Not that there's anything wrong with that…

You can use the information in this manifesto to make any company more focused, more efficient, and more grassroots. Throughout this manifesto, though, I'll be primarily addressing the classic bootstrapper: entrepreneurs who are working their butts off to start a great business from scratch with no (or almost no) money.

I call it an entrepreneurial business template: a gold mine of great ideas and so much common sense. The Bootstrapper's Bible is available on free download only for the next two weeks.

22 July 2004

As a regular customer of Amazon.co.uk, I decided to add some Amazon advertising to this blog, which you can see if you scroll down the page. I've not gone overboard with loads of graphics and overtly plugging product for sale, just highlighted some business reading with a particular focus on topics surrounding corporate communication. Amazon has loads of summer deals at the moment so now might be a good time to take advantage of some keen price offers!

Amazon really do have the e-commerce model solidly built and a proven success. This is especially so in the whole experience you have in going to their website, selecting what you want, ordering it and getting delivery. The UK operation delivers most things throughout the European Union countries and it's a faultless service in my experience over the last four years. They surely do truly understand what the phrase 'customer service' actually means in creating and sustaining customer loyalty which is reflected in Amazon's consistent performance and growth.

In creating the ad that's on this page, you're presented with an extremely simple means of auto-generating the HTML code within the ad graphic which cycles through various book titles depending on the keywords you've chosen. Dead easy.

I was pleased to see that one of the book titles in this current ad cycle I'm running is Corporate Conversations: A Guide to Crafting Effective and Appropriate Internal Communications by Shel Holtz, ABC, published in the US last October. Shel is a good friend and colleague and fellow accredited member of IABC. I have one of his previous books, Public Relations on the Net: Winning Strategies to Inform and Influence the Media, the Investment Community, the Government, the Public and More! first published in the US in 1998, which I found an excellent resource for learning about online PR.

If you're looking for good sources of information on these topics, researched and written by a well-respected business communicator, I'd strongly recommend either of Shel's books. He knows what he's talking about, can articulate the subject matter well and knows how to write.

[Updated 23:10] News just in from the Wall Street Journal: Amazon Swings to a Profit On Strong International Sales. While North American sales climbed 13% to $792 million during the quarter, international sales surged 50% to $595 million. Excluding the benefits of favorable currency-exchange rates, sales were up 38%.

21 July 2004

I'm currently reading My Life,' Bill Clinton's memoirs. So far, I'm with Bill when he had graduated and went to Washington. It's all a bit heavy going, to be honest, but broadly enjoyable for a politician's bio.